Honesty Enabled by Anonymity

Almost Free

In the next few months, I am finally moving out of my childhood home, a place that has always been the source of very complicated and painful feelings for me. I haven’t tried my hand at poetry for a long time, but this felt like a good time to try again.

This cage has closed around me
for nearly thirty years
and now the time has come
to stand and dry my tears

What was once a refuge
is now a cursed place
with ghosts of past abuses
crowding in this hallowed space

My escape is close enough to taste
my fear palpable and cold
This house now stands in ruins
where a bill of lies was sold

Here at the end of this great race
my endurance starts to wane
so close and yet so far away
freedom locked behind past pain

The ghosts now roam here freely
their ownership nearly complete
So close to breaking out of prison
I struggle to my feet

Can I ever leave behind
what this house has made of me?
Will I ever really find escape
a place that’s truly free?

A cage, a sanctuary,
a prison and a home
This house has been so many things
it’s now a memory catacomb

When I finally shut the door
for the last and final time
I choose to close the door as well
on this, the worst of crimes

My life has never been my own
perhaps now it finally will
when this house is bare and empty
and the ghosts are finally still